Raquel Byrnes (6 page)

“Just in case you need to escape again tonight, I thought you might appreciate this.” He handed me a small flashlight. His smile, though brilliant, did not extend to his soulful eyes. “And don’t mind Tuttle. I’ve known her since birth, and she rarely takes to anyone at first.”

He placed the flashlight in my hand and curled my fingers around it. Awareness shot through me. He was so close, so handsome, and I didn’t like how it threw me off balance. Thankful for the low light hiding the probable pink in my cheeks, I cleared my throat, stepping away.

“I…thank you, but I won’t be fleeing in the middle of the night again.”

“That’s too bad,” Simon murmured. “I rather liked rescuing you.”

My gaze shot up, but he already strode towards the door. I swallowed hard, my heart ramming in my chest. He left me standing in the darkening room.

The log in the fireplace cracked and tumbled into the embers.

I glanced back at the bookcase.

Strange.

6

The next morning, I awoke early and checked on Davenport. He was sleeping comfortably, and I decided to go downstairs to catch breakfast before Mrs. Tuttle made me anything. The bruise on my head looked better and I peeled off the bandage. Slipping into a long, white-eyelet skirt and fitted black T-shirt, I twisted my hair into a chignon and stole down the carpeted steps in my flip-flops. The house was quiet. The wind from last night let up as the sun rose; and as I passed an open window, the smell of clean earth and pine greeted me.

A towering grandfather clock in the foyer chimed the six o’clock hour, and I turned, noticing it for the first time. Massive, carved in mahogany, with gleaming brass, the clock stood taller than I.

The sound of a large truck coming up the drive caught my attention, and I peered out of the window near the front doors. I opened the door and saw Simon speaking with the driver as the truck idled. Men carrying large wood crates struggled along the gravel path around the back of Shadow Bay Hall. Strange symbols and foreign writing were scrawled across the discolored wood sides. The driver shouted to the men, and it sounded like French to me. He got out and followed them around the house and out of sight.

Simon turned to the door and waved his paper.

“Delivery. Did we wake you?”

“I was already up. The cars are cleared from the roadway, then, I take it.”

“Just this morning.” He nodded. “You’re up early.”

“Wanted to see how Mr. Hale was doing,” I said, and my gaze went to the papers.

“Wondering what’s in the crates?” A smile pulled at Simon’s lips, and he folded his arms, an eyebrow tilting up.

“A bit, yes.” I bit my lower lip. “What are they, mummies?”

He chuckled, a low laugh deep in his chest. His smile was truly brilliant to see.

“Not exactly mummies, but close.”

“Really?” I’d been joking, but his answer caught me off guard. “What?”

“First century Roman,” Simon said and motioned for me to follow him. “This may interest you, actually. You seem to have an affinity for strange glass bottles.”

“Are you serious?” I caught up with him, my flip-flops crunching the gravel as we walked. A cool breeze sailed over us, rustling the trees. I crossed my arms. “As in ancient?”

“Yes.” Simon looked over, sighed, and pulled off his sweater in one motion. A white T-shirt clung to his broad chest and shoulders. I smiled nervously.

“You really need to dress warmer,” he said, handing me his sweater. “Unlike your hometown, we definitely dip below seventy degrees here.”

“Thank you.” I slipped my arms through his sweater. “Summers here aren’t very long, are they?”

“On an island like Noble, the wind starts to chill in late August.”

We walked down a path to a building that stood butted up against the woods behind the Hall. Invisible in the night and obscured by the stand of trees, I hadn’t noticed it the day before. A large cottage with river-rock walls and a white Dutch door reminded me of something out of a storybook. The top half of the door stood open, and I could smell the heady scent of rich tea in the air.

“Josif,” Simon called out, and a man leaned out the door. He looked foreign.

“We are finished,
Fratele
 Hale,” Josif said. His gaze glanced over me, but he didn’t say anything. “When should we return?”

“In two weeks. If they want authentication sooner, they’ll have to cut back the offerings in the auction lot.”

Josif nodded, motioned to the other men in the cottage, and the group headed back towards the truck.

“So…antiquities dealer?” I asked as we moved into the cottage.

“Not exactly,” Simon said. He went to the kitchenette, poured from a carafe, and handed me a cup of steaming liquid. “Tea?”

I tasted it and nearly spat it back out. “Wow…this is…different.”

“Should have warned you,” he said and took my cup. “Sorry. It’s from the village apothecary. It’s supposed to be good for the health, but you’re right, it’s a bit of an acquired tasted.”

“There’s an apothecary on the island?”

Simon nodded. He took another sip of his, winced, and finished it off with a quick tilt of his cup.

“Take a look around.” He coughed, wiping his mouth. “That was a strong batch.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said. “I’m sticking to coffee.”

Set up as a workshop, the cottage spanned the length of a three-car garage. Padded metal shelves and hewn wood tables held dozens of artifacts. From statues to carved wooden masks, everything I’d ever looked at through museum display glass sat right in front of me. I wandered wide-eyed along the perimeter of the cottage, in awe. The far end of the small house held a room closed off with a heavy metal door. I glanced through the small window in the door and saw walls lined with bottles and beakers. Metal tables took up the floor space. It looked like my high school chemistry lab. Along the far wall, a peg board displayed a set of swords and old wooden guns.

“Civil War era,” Simon said. “My great grandfather collected them.”

“This…” I pointed to a medallion dangling from a chain. Set against black velvet, the gold setting held a red faceted stone that sparkled like fire in the night sky. “Is this a ruby?”

Simon looked up from his paperwork and nodded. “It supposedly belonged to Ramses II. He had red hair, like his father Seti I, so giving him a rose-red stone like that was an act of recognition of his association with the deity, Set.”

“I—I can’t believe you have these treasures just lying around like this.”

“It’s a fake.” Simon went back to his paperwork. “I tested it in the lab. It was cast centuries later.”

“But it looks so real.” I peered at it. The faces of the jewel reflected the ceiling lights with a brilliant sparkle. “I mean, if someone told me this was a ruby, I’d believe them.”

“Oh, it’s a real ruby,” Simon said and walked over. He leaned over, squinted at the stone, and sighed. “It’s just not from the nineteenth dynasty.”

“How…”

“Look at the door,” Simon said, and I followed his gaze. “The artifacts are secure here.”

A security system panel flashed a tiny LED light. Overhead, the fluorescent lights and sprinkler system looked out of place given the outside of the cottage. The large windows had wire mesh, though the white shutters disguised their look as quaint. Simon’s cottage was Fort Knox.

“I didn’t notice,” I said.

“That’s the idea.” Simon nodded to the crate nearest the door. “Come look at this.”

He took a crowbar and leveraged the lid. Nestled inside the pale bristle stuffing, sat a metal box. Simon pulled it out, walked over to the table, and opened it.

I stared at the delicate glass bottle. Dark purple with a tapering neck and flared mouth, it looked free blown. Simon cradled it in the palm of his hand. The stopper was a single, lavender-hued crystal chiseled to fit into the top.

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s a medicine bottle,” Simon said. “And this
is
real; first century Roman glassware. I thought you’d find it interesting given your box of mysterious elixirs.”

He smiled then, a dimpled grin that sent my pulse quivering. I had to tear my gaze from his in order to speak coherently. What happened to keeping my distance? What happened to protecting my heart?

“Wow.” I shook my head and attempted to hide the rush of warmth to my cheeks by turning to face the rack of metal shelves to my right.

“So you authenticate antiques? That’s what you do?”

“I used to do more work at dig sites.” He set the bottle back into the metal box and closed the lid. “But now I look at collections for auction houses or museums, anything from ancient BC to the Byzantine era.” A wisp of sadness flitted across his face and was gone.

I wondered if he missed being in the field.

“Do you have a leather fedora and a whip?” I asked him with a grin, trying to lighten the mood that had gone suddenly dark.

“That movie was about an archaeologist, not an art historian,” Simon said, but smiled. “Though I often thought I’d look good in a hat.”

“I could see that,” I said. With his muscled arms filling out the T-shirt and the scruff on his chin, Simon seemed rugged, as though he’d be right at home at an archaeological dig in the Montana badlands.

“What are you thinking, Rosetta?” A questioning smile slid across his face. “Are you imagining adventures in ancient ruins?”

“Something like that.” I pushed away from the table, eager to put distance between myself and Simon’s intoxicating closeness. “What else do you have in those mysterious crates?”

I stayed a few more minutes with Simon. We talked about the rest of the glassware in the crates, and he invited me to come back once they were all unpacked.

Striding down the path, my thoughts were at the cottage with Simon. A shadow figure flashed through the trees to my left. Startled, I glanced back at the cottage. Simon had shut the door and no one else was outside. The silence of the woods engulfed, broken only by the far off snap of a twig. Awareness spiked the hairs on my arms. Movement farther down caught my eye, and I started towards it, determined to debunk the wild thoughts quickening my pulse.

“Hello?” I stopped to listen, scanning the tree trunks for movement. There, in the distance, a flutter of blue low to the ground. “Hey!”

I picked through the woods trying to run, flip-flops slapping against my heels. Hampered by the thick growth and dense foliage, I dodged fallen trunks and nearly lopped off my head on a low branch. Dark clouds, visible through the thick canopy, mottled the sunlight and cast the floor of the woods in eerie shadows.

The blue figure pulled further away, flitting quickly around the trees as if running through nothing more than fog. I lost sight when it slipped behind a white rock far ahead.

I stopped dead, pulse pounding. I’d run headlong into an old cemetery. The white rocks were headstones amid a thicket of overgrown grass and brambles. Turning in a circle, I could hear my own pulse as I took in the rusted black fence and chipped cherub statue pouring imaginary water from a vessel on his shoulder. The only sound disrupting the unnatural stillness was my own labored breathing.

The cemetery must have been at least a hundred years old judging from the dates on the headstones and the wear on the rickety iron fence. A massive tree arched over the burial ground, its long branches weeping over the cracked and crumbling grave markers. Wind rattled the leaves and sent the grasses quivering against the bleached monuments to lives long past.

Movement pulled my gaze to the open gate. A little girl with raven hair and a light blue dress stood staring at me. I gasped and she cocked her head to the side, her blue eyes regarding me with curiosity.

“Are you all right?” she asked. Her slight accent reminded me of Simon’s.

“I—I.” I patted my heart, slowing my breath. “You must be Lavender?”

“Yes.” She curtsied daintily and smiled. “And you are?”

I smiled at her grown up demeanor.

“I’m Rosetta Ryan,” I said and squatted down to her eye level. “Why are you running out here in the woods all by yourself?”

“I’m not alone,” she said and giggled. “I’m playing with Lucien.”

“Lucien?” I turned to look over my shoulder, puzzled. I hadn’t seen another child out here. “Where is he?”

Lavender giggled and pointed to the cherub statue. “He’s standing over there.”

I stood and dusted off my hands. “Oh, he’s your imaginary friend.”

“Not imaginary, you just can’t see him,” Lavender insisted.

“OK, OK.” I put my hands up in surrender. “I believe you.”

She gave me a dubious look and then shrugged. “You broke the line,” she said and pointed to the ground. “That’s bad.”

“What?” I looked down at her feet and frowned. A line of black powder as thick as a brick curved along the length of the iron fence.

I bent down to inspect it. The fine powder resembled charcoal dust. A smudge in the line where I’d run through the gate was the only place it was broken.

“What is it?”

Lavender looked over my shoulder and back at me. “Lucien says it’s a
linnia fantom
,” she said in a whisper.

“A what?”

She pierced me with her dark blue eyes and smiled. “It’s a ghost line.”

“A ghost line?” I rocked back on my heels, shaking my head. “I don’t know what that is.”

“Me either, but Lucien says it’s bad to break the line.” Her countenance darkened, and she shook her head making the long dark tresses shimmy. “Really not good.”

“What does he think will happen?” I stood up and wiped my fingers on my skirt. “It’s only powder.”

“He says this will happen.” Lavender hopped over the black powder into the cemetery and then back out. She did a twirl and bowed.

I shrugged, not quite understanding her game.

Lavender sighed with exaggeration and hopped back and forth over the line again.

“They’ll get out,” she said, her petite mouth pulled down with irritation.

“What will get out?”

A wave of wind rushed over the cemetery grasses and buffeted us, sending our hair flying and our skirts whipping. Lavender put her little finger to her pink lips and motioned for me to come closer with her other. I leaned in.